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My Latest Project: Building Niche Amazon Sites

As I write this post, I am over 1300 miles away from my home, and I’m enjoying lots of time with my family. So, if you happened to notice a lull in my activity on the blog here, it was because I DROVE the 1300 miles and I haven’t had much time outside of enjoying some vacation time. Being the end of the year, I don’t expect to get much done here on my blog or with the rest of my business. However, I have BIG plans for 2012…most of which I will eventually be discussing on my blog. Part of those plans include diversifying my income outside of Google Adsense a bit more. Among the many different avenues of income I have planned, one of them is building a few niche sites monetized by Amazon Associates. In fact, I have already gotten started.

At the beginning of this month I purchased 7 domains all targeting products sold on Amazon.com. I plan to monetize these sites primarily through the Amazon Associates program. In the past, I have used the Amazon Associates program very sparingly, and have never had an entire site dedicated to that affiliate program. So, as I build these 7 sites, it should be a very interesting and hopefully profitable project. I plan to share the results with all of you along the way.

How I Found Keywords to Target

Finding keywords that target Amazon products is in some respects easier than finding keywords best monetized by Google Adsense. Hands down there are WAY more keywords you can target with Google Adsense; however, with Amazon keywords, you know right where to find them. Just go to Amazon.com and start browsing the products. This is exactly what I did. I looked through lots of products, and the more obscure the better in my opinion, then I started writing down the products and other related terms to be used as seed keywords.

Once I had a good list of seed keywords, I plugged these into Long Tail Pro to generate a larger list of keywords overall. Then I essentially filtered these based on search volume. I am only targeting keywords that have over 5,000 exact match local searches per month in the US. I did not even look at cost per click because in the case of Amazon, I am more concerned about getting the visitor over to Amazon.com where they can buy something; rather than worrying about how much I will make per click on Adsense.

I checked for exact match domains, but could not find any. This is not a big deal to me anymore. I just took the keywords and added a suffix and purchased these non-exact match domains. I rank for tons of keywords without having an exact match domain, so this is a very secondary criteria for me.

Monetizing My New Sites

At this point, these new Amazon niche sites have been built by my VA and I have added content to all of them that I ordered through Textbroker.com. However, I have not added Amazon or any other types of ads yet. In order to maximize my revenue with Amazon Associates, I have been discussing some things with my friend Chris Guthrie about his success with Amazon Associates. If you are not familiar with Chris, he sold one of his Amazon sites for over 6 figures last year! I’d love to follow his example on that one for sure!

Quite a while ago, Chris was nice enough to let me check out his Niche Profit Course about building these types of sites. I went through the entire thing and picked up some very nice tidbits of knowledge about how to specifically monetize sites with Amazon. Once of the most important things I learned was using every opportunity possible to send your visitors over to Amazon. Because once a user clicks your Amazon affiliate link, they are “cookied” for 24 hours. Meaning for the next 24 hours if they buy ANYTHING on Amazon (not just what you sent them to look at, but anything), then you get a commission.

A Few Tips I Learned From an Amazon Expert

One way to get some more Amazon clicks is to make your images of products on your site an affiliate link rather than just a link to the image itself. Users do in fact click on product images and this will get your affiliate link activated for that particular user. Another thing I learned was the use of text links, these apparently convert much better than other types of Amazon widgets. So, after going through Niche Profit Course, I feel like I should be able to set up my new Amazon sites properly. And of course, I will keep everyone posted here down the road as those sites grow.

Shortly after I built these sites, Chris informed me (just last week) that he decided to launch a special offer for his Niche Profit Course on the Warrior Forum. I had no knowledge that he was going to do this when I found my keywords and decided to build these Amazon sites. However, I about fell out of my chair when he told the HUGE discount he was giving for his course. Just so you know, he usually charges $97 for the course and its been selling at that price for over a year. Now you can get it for less than it would cost you to take your spouse (or whoever) out for a steak dinner. If you are interested at all in building niche Amazon Sites, you have got to see how little he is charging for his course right here.

This isn’t a full review of his course, but I do want to add a few comments about it. Overall, its a very good course on monetizing your sites with Amazon. He covers the critical aspects of ad placement and site structure to maximize your success with Amazon. I will be honest though and say that the course is somewhat lacking on how to analyze the Google competition when picking a keyword and link building. But I suppose that is not the main purpose of the course anyway. In reality, I think you can get everything you need to get started on both competitor analysis, keyword research, and link building right here on my Niche Websites Hub!

But when it comes to monetizing with Amazon Associates, I am not an expert whereas Chris is. So, at the price he is selling Niche Profit Course for, I think its definitely worth a look right here.

In Conclusion

Overall, I am excited about starting an Amazon Associates project with these new 7 sites! Of course, I am building some other Adsense sites at the same time this month, but these will give me something else exciting to track in the coming months. Overall, I think there are a lot more niches available to choose from when it comes to Google Adsense, but there are also some great Amazon products that are best monetized with the Associates program. If you have tried the Amazon affiliate program, I’d love to hear about it in the comments below. Is there anything else you think I should consider as I build these new sites? If you have any other comments or questions, let me know.

85 Comments for this Post

The only bad thing about amazon is that you only have 24 hours for visitors to make a decision but since amazon have a nice conversion they still buy anything from them.

My experience from this is that the best way to promote amazon products is having lots of traffic. So in this case keywords with 1k exact searches arent enough. (I learned the hard way ) ;).

But i hope you do ook on this project!

steve

December 22, 2011

Well we dont even get that on adsese its about 30 seconds..

There are a few guys selling course out there that slate amazon. But its just beacuse they have not tried it.

How many time do you get $20 from a visitor on adsense or more for that matter. It happens off on eof my sites into amazon most days. One product is all its takes.

The conversion once they get to amazon 5% so thats pretty darn good.

cheers

Bryan

December 23, 2011

I completely agree. I find 5% is doable as long as most of the traffic is US if I’ve done my initial research done right.

Bryan

December 23, 2011

No, not true at all.

Buying intent keywords are key to converting traffic along with quality review that provides value and not being gimmicky — trying to sell hard.

As well, the majority of traffic is in 1st position, so if you had no success because you were NOT in the top 3, it’s because you probably had next to no visitors to your site.

You want to make sure most of the searches are Mostly US traffic when promoting the US Associate program or use a really good localizer plugin.

If you pick good buying intent keywords, get ranked in first position, provide quality info about the product, and know how to get click throughs, 1000 exact Local(US) traffic can be worth building the site.

Some products just convert better too, but for the most part if you get a decent about of US buyer traffic to your site and get them clicking through, you should be able to get worthwhile conversion rate.

I wouldn’t even worry about diversifying your income as much as I would be diversifying your TRAFFIC.

It’s obvious you know how to get traffic from search engines, but what if that disappeared tomorrow?

I’m sure you will do fine with Amazon, I do okay, but most of the money I make from Amazon is from my subscriber list – I don’t usually put affiliate links directly on my websites…unless it’s a niche review site.

Can I suggest something? Maybe creating a super informative site that “gives away” a lot of free information, but that has a nice backend system for converting your traffic to subscribers and your subscribers to your custtomers???

Eric – I TOTALLY agree with you 100%! In fact, I wrote a post about why TRAFFIC source (search engines) is the vulnerable point – not monetization strategies. In fact, the entire reason I created this blog was to try “niche pursuits” that diversify my income outside of search engine traffic. This is why I am building an iPhone app and taking on other projects that do not rely on search engines at all. So, you are right on…and I couldn’t agree more.

I also like your suggestion of creating a site more focused on subscribers to capture that source of traffic. That is really the way to go. If my sites start getting traffic, I will indeed try to work to build more of a subscriber list.

Cool. Apps are something I want to get into, but i just don’t want to spread myself so thin at the moment.

I would start your list first – after I post some content to a new site, I usually work on email marketing like getting follow up started and creating something enticing to get people to sign up. It’s just better to start it from the beginning because you will lose a lot of subscribers since I’m sure you will be working on more than one site, you could lose track of a site that is doing well.

I think diversifying your source of income is as important as diversifying your source of traffic. Imagine if Google whipped out some new algorithm, call it ‘Farmer 2.0′, effectively destroying the adsense site model(s).. you’d be ruined if ranking high in Google was your primary source of traffic. However if you were to diversify your source of traffic let’s say by adding some paid traffic, your sites and therefore your bread and butter would still be afloat. Granted you might have to change your monetization method away from Adsense if you opted to go this route.

Now, if you were an Amazon Affiliate you’d have better chances staying afloat if the aforementioned algorithmic change were to pass due to high commission payouts therefore more cash to spend on advertising. However, as you already know I assume, this all depends on what your advertising.

Buying traffic and sending it to affiliate offers whether it be CPA or redirecting them to a website seems like a worthwhile pursue. At least to me… I hear less about Adwords changes than I do about search algorithmic changes.

For us affiliate marketers wanting to maintain our cash flows I think our safest bet is to form a business entity in a state such as Delaware or somewhere that doesn’t have sales tax that way we don’t have to worry about advertisers canceling there affiliate networks in our state..

Anyway just some things to ponder. Good future thinking about diversifying your income sources Spencer.

A few weeks ago I replaced some images on my Adsense Sites with Amazon Affiliate images and I noticed a big fall in my search traffic. I am not sure if the two are related but I changed back to the old images and the sites have mostly recovered.

Perhaps it is best to focus on one monetization method and not mix and match?

Interesting. So, you must have been getting alot of traffic from your images. Changing the link structure of these images must have effected how they ranked on Google images. I don’t know the right level of mixing amazon and adsense together…but I guarantee I will be testing it.

I’ve had bad luck with that. You want to make sure you are focusing on 1 thing – whether that be clicks or sales or converting to subscribers. You will make more money through better conversion rates by only having one form of monetization (in my experience).

Hey Aaron – Sure, I’ll earn some commissions – but everyone should know that . The reality is that I did indeed buy these sites before I was aware of Chris’s WSO, so it was just a good fit. Hopefully its a win-win for everyone.

Wow – 50 Amazon sites…very impressive. Bets of luck!

Darren

December 22, 2011

Hi Spencer – I am super happy to see you starting a new case study. I learn some great stuff from you here!

I too don’t worry about getting exact match domains. I Have a number of sites that have prefix, and they all rank great. Competition analysis and back links trump all!

Chris Guthrie’s course looks great too, and getting smarter with amazon is on my to do list, so I am going to pick up a copy of it.

I am curious as to what level of articles you were purchasing from textbroker? And if you have any tips for how you ask for your articles to be written? Until very recently I have always been writing LOADS of my own articles, but now my business has grown to the point that I can outsource effectively.

Darren

December 22, 2011

That’s awesome Spencer – thanks!

Darren

January 5, 2012

I picked up the course from Chris Guthrie a couple of days ago. It is great! Even though I do great with adsense, this course gave me some great insights for effectively putting amazon niche sites together.

I was impressed with how clear and transparent Chris was, and how he takes you from the A to Z of putting the sites together with nice organized videos. He makes things easy to understand and follow.

Dave

December 22, 2011

Hey Spencer

Like the fact your looking into Amazon! One of my Amazon sites is doing very well this month (due to xmas obviously). I find I can easily build one amazon site a week and have done 5 a week at one time. But, just like adsense, some sites will perform better than others. Also, keywords that one can rank for are much easier to find (imo). The big issue for me at this point are the Google shopping results which appeared on one of my keywords several months back and it dramtacally impacted my sites revenue.

I’ll be watching your progress as you move this project forwards. By the way, your keyword tool is great!

Personally I haven’t had much success with Amazon. I do better with Adsense but I always come back here because you always put out good content. I’m happy to buy things from your aff links because I know those proceeds will contribute to the ongoing success and value this blog brings to our weird and wonderful community of Internet Marketing. Merry Xmas Spencer and look forward to seeing some great things happen here in 2012

Hey Nigel – thanks for the support! Its is a weird and wonderful world of internet marketing indeed. I haven’t had much success with amazon in the past either, but this is my first “real” attempt to create some sites specifically for that purpose.

I haven’t done a whole lot of Amazon this year, but plan on getting more involved as the months roll along. Since Adsense really started picking up (and payouts are net 30 rather than Amazon’s net 60), I’m working on scaling that until I get comfortable to move onto the next thing. Still, I build on my Amazon sites when I get some free time.

I will say that the coolest thing about selling products on Amazon is that a lot of people tend to purchase more than one thing. It’s always nice to get credit for other items sold that you didn’t promote

One question – once you get things rolling, are you building your links in the same manner as you do for your low-competition Adsense sites?

Bryan, I do indeed plan on building my links in the exact same manner as I do for my adsense sites. Other than how the site is monetized, I see no reason to approach how I try to rank in Google any differently. We’ll see how it goes!

Steve

December 22, 2011

I started out with Amazon sites even though everyone seems to disparage Amazon commissions. I love it. With just 2 of my Amazon sites I get up to the 7.5% commission level and like someone already mentioned, people buy all types of stuff when they are on Amazon. You can have one Amazon account with different tracking ID’s for each site so you can analyze Amazon stats based on each site. I have tried doing some Adsense sites and it just isn’t working out as well as the Amazon sites. At this point I have a system for Amazon sites that is working really well, but it can’t hurt to learn more so I think I will pick up Chris’ guide.

That’s great to hear that Amazon is working well for you. Obviously, Adsense has also just clicked for me…but I can appreciate that others will find success in other avenues. Thanks for the heads up on tracking ids on Amazon; I’ll make sure to use those for each site.

Yo Spencer, I just started on Amazon sites too. Figured it’s time to diversity our sites and get into some physical product promotion. Although the commission is very low I am excited about the conversion rates. I personally buy everything from Amazon and so do alot of people I know.

I find that the biggest challenge so far is getting quality content. I’ve ordered from Textbroker before as well, but it’s really hit or miss. Even when paying for higher-end content, I still find myself going back and improving the content.

Unlike Adsense sites, the content of Amazon sites needs to be top notch in order to convert. I think that is the biggest difference between Amazon and Adsense sites.

What’s your take on the amount of pages? I’m going for at least 20 pages myself even for very product-specific sites. I am going to mix in some articles that DON’T have affiliate links as well. For example, if I have 2 articles on 2 different types of vacuum cleaners, I am adding a third article that will discuss how to pick a vacuum cleaner and what to look for. From this article I will link to my product review articles and link OUT to other authority sites.

I have a bunch of articles on my blog on the steps I have taken to build my sites if you are interested in taking a look. Good luck dude!

Hey Bill, sounds like a good strategy. I think if you can manage to get 20 pages of solid content for each of your sites…that’s great! I will be starting with less; perhaps around 5 pages. This is the same strategy I have used with my other sites. Start them all small and then only build on the ones that are performing better.

Mike

December 22, 2011

Hi Spencer! Happy Holidays and Hope your enjoying your vacation! I’m curious to know what type of articles do you have written when your selling products. All of my sites are informational and only one is relevant to a product. So lets say your site is LCD computer monitors, do you have reviews of products or just information about LCD TV’s in general?

Thanks again for every thing! Just ranked my first site on page one of Google for 2 tough KW. Made about 7$ in past few days so far on ad-sense lol. Not much but very excited about that and looking forward to see where it goes from here!

Spencer, I’m really interested to see how Amazon does for you and I’ll pay close attention since I use Amazon links as well.

Thanks for posting Chris’ sale. I couldn’t believe the low price and I’m sure the results of the product will far exceed the cost of the product. I rarely buy anything that someone offers but this couldn’t be matched anywhere. Looking to a great year for 2012 in Amazon.

So interesting and I have sort of been thinking about this for the last little while too Spencer, as it seems the money is a little too good to ignore with Amazon (*if* you can do it in your state). But my number one question was about setting up the pages themselves…soo if I can follow up on that, is what you’re saying sort of like the way to do that is actually to do it more ‘organically’ in your content (post images and words), rather than just trying to find a widget or plugin that will put ads in particular areas? If so that makes a lot of sense honestly, though I never woulda thunk of it. And what does that do to zones we previously thought of as good adsense placement zones – do we just kind of delete them and shrink everything up?

Yes, I think doing it more “organically” is the way to go. However, perhaps you could still use the amazon widgets in less prime locations such as below posts or in the sidebars. However, perhaps a 300×250 image near the top of the post would be a good location for a Amazon affiliate link, along with throughout the post.

Freshfish

December 23, 2011

Spencer, I love your site man but this post sounded like an extended plug for a course that you link to and actually makes me question the relevancy of the post and the information in it…you need to be careful not to sound like you are plugging affiliate progs…I was about to join you in the experiment but when I saw that the article culminated in “a falling out of your chair deal” You lost me.

With Amazon promoting high ticket items has been really key for me. You are absolutely right in that your job should be to drive traffic to the site given the “long time” cookie.

When I view my reports I see people buying all kinds of things, most recently Ham! Yes – crazy I know. I get credited with commission because I drove the individual who made the purchase to Amazon. I don’t promote anything remotely even close to a Ham or any other kind of a food product.

Ha ha! That’s hilarious! I didn’t even know you could buy ham through AMazon.com. But I guess that makes sense with the Holidays coming up…lots of people like to have a Christmas ham!

Marcel

December 26, 2011

Amazon is great but keep it separated and dont combine it with adsense. Amazon is working quite well for me but what I dont like is the maximum commission of 10EUR per sale. I dont know why its valid for the german amazon associates program.

Cool post. Glad to see that you’re getting into Amazon. It’s actually my only income stream at the moment, and it’s going pretty well, although a lot of patience is required since it takes a while to rank these suckers. Long, quality reviews that presell are the most important aspect of this game.

Hey Spencer – glad to hear you are diversifying your income and protecting yourself for whatever comes in the future. That is a great idea and something I plan on doing once I fully figure out how to get my adsense sites cranking. Takes of ton of work when you are doing most of the work yourself. However I am sure I’ll figure it out and then I’ll outsource and then I’ll come up with new ideas of how to make money from other resources like you are doing.

Thanks for keeping us in the loop on what you are doing and what is working well for you.

Looking forward to hearing more of your success stories in the future so I can copy those business models :D.

Jason

December 29, 2011

Spencer, Love the site. Thanks so much for all the helpful information! I have a quick question. What sort of service do you use for your stock photos? Most of them seem ridiculously expensive.

hey Spencer i have been following your info on keywords quite closely lately since i discovered your site and i must say im really impressed. im looking at buying your long tail pro software but what i want to know 1st is this……when i search for one of my keywords in Google without the apostrophe marks around it what is the difference between searching without the marks around the keyword i mean no one uses them in general Google searches do they so why do they matter and why do the search results differ…..im on page 2 with them but only page 12 without them…i get a little bit stumped with that can u explain it please

I didn’t even read much of this as I am still quite upset since I live in a state where the greedy politicians have forced Amazon to stop allowing residents of NC to participate in affiliate accounts. It is extremely frustrating!!

I’ll be following this though in the hope that someday the law changes here or more likely I’ll end up moving first. Good luck!

Looking forward to see your blog posts about this, I tried the Amazon program and Commission Junction a while back with a new site and found it was heavily penalised in the rankings despite several thousands of words of content. It just kept jumping around, and I ended up removing most of the links. It shot up straight away, and I’ve made a regular income just from Adsense.

[…] the DC, talking with Dan and Ian from the LifestyleBusinessPodcast, and going back and forth with Spencer from NichePursuits, we’re very happy with the connections made in 2011 and are looking to expand that in […]

[…] I had a wonderful Holiday season celebrating Christmas and New Years with my family. As I mentioned in my last post, I made a 1300 mile trek to Arizona (where I grew up) to be with parents, brothers, sisters, […]

[…] I had a wonderful Holiday season celebrating Christmas and New Years with my family. As I mentioned in my last post, I made a 1300 mile trek to Arizona (where I grew up) to be with parents, brothers, sisters, […]

[…] the DC, talking with Dan and Ian from the LifestyleBusinessPodcast, and going back and forth with Spencer from NichePursuits, we’re very happy with the connections made in 2011 and are looking to expand that in […]

Jae

January 10, 2012

Hi Spencer, I’m really looking forward to watching this project – Amazon is something I am just getting started with. I have a question regarding your niche choices – throughout the post I see you have specified 5000+ for search volume, and generalized products rather than specific. May I ask if you have any criteria for selecting your niches? (Eg some WSOs have recommended sticking with ones that have a minimum number of similar products, others suggest targeting ones that have products with a minimum number of customer feedback, etc. )

All the best with this project, and can’t wait for your results to start coming in!

I’ve started few amazon sutes too. I earn only few dollars a day, but if I can make more sites like that, lets say 100, it will be few houndreds a day!!! Just my few tips: 1, I am doing all my sites on wordpress platform. 2. I make sure the keyword density is 3%. 4. I use TEXT links only. 5. I cloak these links (VERY IMPORTANT) 6. use images with aff links too. 7. each site have 5 pages (or posts). 8. dont buy brands domains. you will get C&D letter. 9. I outsource the review writing so it’s very easy and fast (I use http://articlewritingetc.com services for that) 10. All my reviews are 700 words+. Google LOVE these. 11. You need to give real value to the readers, nit just write things. 12. I use Aweber, and try to capture their emails too. If I am selling a food processor, I will ask them to opt in for recepies… You got the ide?! That way you can upsale, and give them more links to more affiliate products later on. it’s very good in the holidays season.

Great post, I purchase chris course a while back my self and if you sign up to his free 10 day ecourse it offer alot more then the niche profit course to a certain point. He goes into more detail and I was alittle upset that the free course to me was alittle better then the paid course lol.

But overall the course is good if you want to learn and I recently decided to give it another try as I check my amazon associate account and made some sale on a site I didnt even promote so giving it another go this year and focusing on building a few site base on amazon and there are some cool new plugins I pick-up to help me streamline and find the best product to promote.

Will keep you up to date on how I get on as well and looking forward to hearing more on about your process with amazon.

Quick question (on an old post, sorry!) – when going for an affiliate product site, when researching keywords, do you consider store sites such as walmart.com, target.com, etc. easy to surpass in the rankings despite their high page authorities?

I am assuming it is much harder now for this mainly due to google not caring about the domain name but ranks due to content? How would you get around this? Picking low competition search terms and work on some seo?

Perrin and I use Thrive Content builder on our Authority site to make great looking buttons, ratings and review graphic, and more. But Thrive also allows you to build landing pages, sales pages, use countdown timers and more...without coding experience.